There are other poems by less known poets, which only the individual reader will find and make his own. For myself, I know no poems I like better to read than Matthew Arnold’s “Tristram and Iseult,” “Switzerland,” and “Dover Beach”; while many admire poems by Emerson and George Eliot and Dickens in the same way, though we are not accustomed to think of these writers as among the great poets. Though Edward FitzGerald’s “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” is a translation, it is one of the most popular poems in the English language, and considered also one of the greatest. Note: Many of the poems here mentioned may be found in “A Selection from the Great English Poets,” edited by Sherwin Cody. CHAPTER VI. _HOW TO STUDY SHAKSPERE._ The best way to study Shakspere is to go to see his plays at the theatre, especially when they are presented as Edwin Booth or Henry Irving have played them. What a change from the way in which they were presented in Shakspere’s own time! Then the scenery was so crude that they had to put out a sign on the stage saying, “This is a Forest,” etc. And all the women’s parts were played by boys or young men. There were no Mrs. Siddonses or Ellen Terrys in those days. It is said that Beethoven himself was not a very good piano player, and probably never heard some of his most beautiful sonatas played as Paderewski plays them today. Shakspere probably never saw his plays acted so well as they have been acted many times since his day. The first great actor to make Shakspere classic was David Garrick, a friend of Sam Johnson. He was graceful, light, airy, and gay, yet made an instant success by the naturalness with which he played Richard III, and then Lear, and then Macbeth. Garrick was not an ideal Hamlet, but he gave good support to the famous Peg Woffington, who made her fame in Ophelia on the same stage with Garrick. The most seductive of Woffington’s characters was Rosalind in As You Like It, and she played Portia in the Merchant of Venice with only less charm.